metaphortunate son (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
metaphortunate) wrote2013-05-24 09:45 pm
metaphortunate) wrote2013-05-24 09:45 pm
Entry tags:
toilet training
So toilet training, unsurprisingly, began with me freaking out. See, one of the women who was in my mom's group when the Junebug was born posted to Facebook that her son was finally staying dry through the night, yay! And I freaked out. Because, I mean, I don't demand he be toilet trained just because another kid his age is. That's up to his own personal development. But if another kid is already finished toilet training, then clearly there is a chance that the Junebug's been ready to start; and we hadn't given him that chance. That's on us and I'm pretty unhappy about it.
But neither of us knew anything about toilet training, so I did what I do about everything, which is collect a bunch of books. The ones I have read so far are:
1) 3 Day Potty Training: Start Friday, Done Sunday! by Lora Jensen
2) Potty Training Boys the Easy Way: Helping Your Son Learn Quickly -- Even If He's a Late Starter by Caroline Fertleman
3) Diaper-Free Before 3: The Healthier Way to Toilet Train and Help Your Child Out of Diapers Sooner by Jill M. Lekovic
4) Stress-Free Potty Training: A Commonsense Guide to Finding the Right Approach for Your Child by Sara Au
5) My Big Boy Potty by Joanna Cole
1: I haven't tried it. I know one family who did do a 3 day hell weekend, which the entire family spent literally in the bathroom, and at the end of it the kid was potty trained; but he was an autistic 9 year old and it was their last resort. Basically, I don't want to. The approach just doesn't feel right to me.
2: Good god, this is awful. Something like 60 pages of crappy gender essentialism. Never read this book.
3: This is my second favorite so far, although it has kind of stressed me out because it has made me think that we really should have started earlier. I'm mostly going by the ideas in this book.
The gist of it is that potty training has started happening much later in the U.S. and other countries with easy access to disposable diapers because, well, washing diapers all the time is fucking awful and no one does it for longer than they have to, but disposables are easy to leave the kid in. I knew that the one Russian woman in my mom's group said that in Russia all the kids are toilet trained by the age of two, and I know I was trained by like 18 months, though everyone says girls tend to learn earlier. But so Fertleman's idea is that you don't have to wait for the kid to walk or talk or like that, you just start by putting them on the potty at regular times.
4: This one is all about assigning your kid a Personality Type and talking about how training methods will differ based on whether you have an Internalizer, Strong-Willed Child, Goal-Directed Child, etc. I'm not a big fan of personality tests, but I have to admit that Mr. E and I had this conversation:
5: Okay, technically this one is for the Junebug, but it's still my favorite.
So we got a Baby Bjorn potty seat, and we started putting him on it after all mealtimes. So far he loves it - I think he thinks it's a treat, because we read him a book once he's on it. But I'm worried that he's just too small to use the big toilet - we got him a step stool, but even with the step stool, there is no way he could climb up to it and sit down himself, let alone get his trousers out of the way. To sit on it he has to have his legs far enough apart that his trousers have to be all the way off, not just pulled down. Also, it worries me that he can't put his feet on the step stool even, he has to just balance on his butt, which I think might make it harder for the muscles to relax. So I just also got a regular kid's potty today. The big disadvantage of the kid's potty is that you have to empty it and then wash it out rather than just flushing. The big advantage is that the kid can (eventually (theoretically)) go over to it himself, pull down his own pants and sit his own butt on it without needing to communicate to a parent that he needs to be put on the toilet. Of course, today I tried to get him to sit on his brand new potty and he demanded to sit on the big toilet instead, so we'll just see how that goes.
So far he pooped in the toilet one time a week ago, and then this morning Mr. E put him on it right after he woke up, and he pooped AND PEED in it. There was great celebration this morning! We're going to try some intensive naked time this weekend with the new potty. I'll let you know how it goes, although hopefully not in too much detail.
Every time I've talked to my mom about Hypothetical New Sibling, she's warned us that the Junebug may act up when the baby comes and begged us to please be patient and understanding. Which, I have maybe not been as patient and understanding as I could have been about that, with her, because the thing is I already KNEW that, plus at this point she's been telling me once a week or so for several months. But then yesterday I found out why. Because, in my quest for advice and knowledge, I've been asking her about how she toilet trained me and my brother - when did she start, what did she do, how did it go, does she have any advice. And finally, yesterday, she gave me all the details she could remember about the process:
1) After a while, she knew around when I usually needed to go, and she started putting me on the potty at those times.
2) Then eventually I was toilet trained.
3) But when my brother was born (I was a little under two years old) I started refusing to use the potty.
4) So my dad would stand over me and yell about how goddammit if I kept refusing to poop my ass would explode, or something, and scare me and make me cry.
Sigh. I agreed that screaming at the baby and scaring him would not be helpful, which I think was very reassuring to her. I give my mom a lot of shit, but I should keep in mind that years of living with my dad is responsible for a quite lot of her damage. The worst part is, she honestly believed, and to some degree still believes, that he was the smart one and was right about everything. Which is terrible. Apparently he convinced her that a mother had to stay with the kid all the time until the kid was out of its first year, or else it would be traumatized and damaged for life; which explains why she was so worried that the Junebug would have terrible emotional problems from being put into daycare at 5 months. Ah, dad. It's probably a good thing we can never pay back all we owe our parents. Love and care and crotch punches would be so irremediably mixed up.
But neither of us knew anything about toilet training, so I did what I do about everything, which is collect a bunch of books. The ones I have read so far are:
1) 3 Day Potty Training: Start Friday, Done Sunday! by Lora Jensen
2) Potty Training Boys the Easy Way: Helping Your Son Learn Quickly -- Even If He's a Late Starter by Caroline Fertleman
3) Diaper-Free Before 3: The Healthier Way to Toilet Train and Help Your Child Out of Diapers Sooner by Jill M. Lekovic
4) Stress-Free Potty Training: A Commonsense Guide to Finding the Right Approach for Your Child by Sara Au
5) My Big Boy Potty by Joanna Cole
1: I haven't tried it. I know one family who did do a 3 day hell weekend, which the entire family spent literally in the bathroom, and at the end of it the kid was potty trained; but he was an autistic 9 year old and it was their last resort. Basically, I don't want to. The approach just doesn't feel right to me.
2: Good god, this is awful. Something like 60 pages of crappy gender essentialism. Never read this book.
3: This is my second favorite so far, although it has kind of stressed me out because it has made me think that we really should have started earlier. I'm mostly going by the ideas in this book.
The gist of it is that potty training has started happening much later in the U.S. and other countries with easy access to disposable diapers because, well, washing diapers all the time is fucking awful and no one does it for longer than they have to, but disposables are easy to leave the kid in. I knew that the one Russian woman in my mom's group said that in Russia all the kids are toilet trained by the age of two, and I know I was trained by like 18 months, though everyone says girls tend to learn earlier. But so Fertleman's idea is that you don't have to wait for the kid to walk or talk or like that, you just start by putting them on the potty at regular times.
4: This one is all about assigning your kid a Personality Type and talking about how training methods will differ based on whether you have an Internalizer, Strong-Willed Child, Goal-Directed Child, etc. I'm not a big fan of personality tests, but I have to admit that Mr. E and I had this conversation:
ME: So I was reading this book about your kid's Personality Type and it turns out we have an Internalizer.(Totally true. We have trained our two-year-old not to touch electrical cords. We can just leave the laptops plugged in and lying around and he won't mess with the cords. The door came off the cupboard we keep the pots and pans in and we just lived with it for several months because he would play with them, sure, but really, not in a destructive way. He is a really, really easy kid.)
ME: According to them, that means those kids that want to have all the information in advance, and don't want to do what they're not sure of. Says here, if you've never felt the need to babyproof your house, you've got an Internalizer.
Mr. E: We've never felt the need to babyproof?
ME: Not like some people do.
Mr. E: True.
ME: The book says if you've got the kid who sits at the top of the slide watching all the other kids go down until he's good and ready to go, you've got an Internalizer.(Note that I started this story by listing all the books I acquired and read through before I felt prepared to put my kid on the damn toilet.)
We look at each other.
BOTH: That's our kid.
BOTH: I guess that's not surprising considering that's exactly the way I am.
Pause.Anyway, the book says that for this type of kids, the key is to explain explain explain what's going to happen, and why, and let them come in the bathroom with you when you're using it to watch what you do so they can imitate it, and set up routines; and that's what comes naturally to me anyway (not surprising), so it's working for us so far.
BOTH: I was hoping he would be a little bit more adventurous than me, actually.
5: Okay, technically this one is for the Junebug, but it's still my favorite.
So we got a Baby Bjorn potty seat, and we started putting him on it after all mealtimes. So far he loves it - I think he thinks it's a treat, because we read him a book once he's on it. But I'm worried that he's just too small to use the big toilet - we got him a step stool, but even with the step stool, there is no way he could climb up to it and sit down himself, let alone get his trousers out of the way. To sit on it he has to have his legs far enough apart that his trousers have to be all the way off, not just pulled down. Also, it worries me that he can't put his feet on the step stool even, he has to just balance on his butt, which I think might make it harder for the muscles to relax. So I just also got a regular kid's potty today. The big disadvantage of the kid's potty is that you have to empty it and then wash it out rather than just flushing. The big advantage is that the kid can (eventually (theoretically)) go over to it himself, pull down his own pants and sit his own butt on it without needing to communicate to a parent that he needs to be put on the toilet. Of course, today I tried to get him to sit on his brand new potty and he demanded to sit on the big toilet instead, so we'll just see how that goes.
So far he pooped in the toilet one time a week ago, and then this morning Mr. E put him on it right after he woke up, and he pooped AND PEED in it. There was great celebration this morning! We're going to try some intensive naked time this weekend with the new potty. I'll let you know how it goes, although hopefully not in too much detail.
Every time I've talked to my mom about Hypothetical New Sibling, she's warned us that the Junebug may act up when the baby comes and begged us to please be patient and understanding. Which, I have maybe not been as patient and understanding as I could have been about that, with her, because the thing is I already KNEW that, plus at this point she's been telling me once a week or so for several months. But then yesterday I found out why. Because, in my quest for advice and knowledge, I've been asking her about how she toilet trained me and my brother - when did she start, what did she do, how did it go, does she have any advice. And finally, yesterday, she gave me all the details she could remember about the process:
1) After a while, she knew around when I usually needed to go, and she started putting me on the potty at those times.
2) Then eventually I was toilet trained.
3) But when my brother was born (I was a little under two years old) I started refusing to use the potty.
4) So my dad would stand over me and yell about how goddammit if I kept refusing to poop my ass would explode, or something, and scare me and make me cry.
Sigh. I agreed that screaming at the baby and scaring him would not be helpful, which I think was very reassuring to her. I give my mom a lot of shit, but I should keep in mind that years of living with my dad is responsible for a quite lot of her damage. The worst part is, she honestly believed, and to some degree still believes, that he was the smart one and was right about everything. Which is terrible. Apparently he convinced her that a mother had to stay with the kid all the time until the kid was out of its first year, or else it would be traumatized and damaged for life; which explains why she was so worried that the Junebug would have terrible emotional problems from being put into daycare at 5 months. Ah, dad. It's probably a good thing we can never pay back all we owe our parents. Love and care and crotch punches would be so irremediably mixed up.
no subject
I would not have said I was really an internalizer, but I can totally imagine child-me taking such a threat with grave certainty. I was easily convinced of doom (especially by myself).
no subject